Small satellites constellations for continuous regional surveillance

摘要

The present considerable interest in low Earth light-weight satellite constellations for remote sensing missions has lead to satellite syttems providing continuous coverage of particular areas.The paper describes a technique for obtaining efficient revisit coverages and repeat cycles from satellites distributed on one or more orbital planes. Two constellations deployed on Sun-Synchronous and Multi-Sun-Synchronous planes have been chosen to take into account perturbative environmental effects and subsequent required station keeping considerations.